


She Took Me To The Sky

by VSSAKJ



Category: Starless - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Charting Stars, Childbirth, Menstruation, Nonbinary Character, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24589327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/pseuds/VSSAKJ
Summary: Excerpts of a journey beneath a star-filled sky, after a lifetime of dark nights.
Relationships: Khai/Zariya (Starless)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	She Took Me To The Sky

My first experience with a woman’s cycle was terrible.

It woke me before sunrise: a clenching, agonising squeeze deep in my belly that made me gasp aloud and blink water from my eyes. Shuddering, I groped in the dark for Zariya’s hand, desperate to confirm that she was there and well. She woke easily, propped herself up on one elbow and asked in a whisper, “Darling, what’s wrong?”

“My stomach...” I mumbled in reply, wrapping my arms around my middle and curling into a defensive posture. “It... hurts. Did we eat something? Are you well?”

“I’m fine.” Zariya murmured softly, her expression thick with worry. She reached forward to brush hair from my forehead, studying my expression. The cruel vicegrip eased its hold for a moment, long enough that I could gaze back at her and appreciate the concern etched across her face even while I regretted being the cause of it. My Sun-Blessed princess, my lioness love. I saw the moment an idea occurred to her, the way it slowly unknit the wrinkles of fear, then felt her hand squeeze mine as she asked aloud, “Love, between your legs... is there blood?”

I could think of little I wanted to do less than slip my fingers inside my underwear to check, but in the end I did, and found a film of red coating my fingers on their return. Zariya’s sigh of relief set my heart at ease, even as a new wave of pain reached out from the depths of my loins. Laying her gold-inlaid hands over mine, Zariya offered me a comforting smile “Thank goodness. It will pass, darling, but I’m afraid it may be painful for the next day or two. I’ll fetch a warm compress and tea that’s good for the pain.”

She slid from the bed, reaching for her crutches as I tried to force myself upright. She shouldn’t _go_ without me—even in a peaceful world where the sky was dotted with stars, I could hardly stand for her to be out of my sight. I crumpled back onto the mattress less than halfway through the motion as a fresh new agony rolled through me, so painful I clenched even my toes as I willed it to pass.

I must have slept again; I roused to the feel of Zariya laying a warm, weighted cloth on my abdomen, startled that she’d regained the room without my knowing. My senses were all weakened, dulled—feeling delirious and distraught, I asked, “Is it this bad every month, for all women?”

Zariya stroked my forehead and smiled, shaking her head softly. “It varies, darling. You grow accustomed to it. The first time is often the worst.”

By the following morning, my agony had subsided to a persistent, dull ache that allowed me to rise from the bed without wincing. Stubborn, furious, helpless, I did what I could of my exercises, ever seeking to maintain what edge I could. Pahrkun’s wind rested quiet within me, and I was too undone to summon it. I tried to imagine Vironesh as an opponent to spar with, and only managed to convince myself that he would kill me in my current state. It wouldn’t even be a challenge for him.

Not for the first time in my life, but for the first time since we’d taken to sea to save the world, I despised the body I’d been born with. For it to betray me thus was almost as bad as when Brother Yarit had first revealed that I was _bhazim_ , and yet somehow worse for all the years I’d managed to stave off this horror with the Barren Teardrop.

For all the ways Zariya had helped me learn to love the form I’d been given, that day, I hated it.

We charted the stars by the brightest one, Miasmus. Astronomy had faded into a lost art after the gods fell from the sky and although Zariya’s old records from Liko of Koronis referred to such things as navigating the sea by the position of the stars, no one in living memory could recall if the stars had returned to their old positions or assumed new ones. So we made it a part of our journey to map the newly star-strewn sky.

As our crew sailed, Zariya and I huddled together atop the bow and traced patterns through the distant lights of all our gods. We named constellations as they loomed out of the darkness for us: Pahrkun’s Beetle and Anamuht’s Flame; Obid’s Courser and Isfahel’s Casket; Shambloth’s Blossom and Galdano’s Scales. One night, we pieced out the shape of a _yakhan_ , and together we named it for Vironesh. Another, the precise points of a _zim_ became clear to us, and we named it for the Shahallim.

Zariya kept meticulous records of our travels and our stars. Some of them seemed to journey across the dark tapestry, like Eshen the Wandering Moon, but for each constellation we named, we managed to find it a second, third, fourth time. If the gods truly had ascended to the heavens, they were happy to recline among themselves and respect our observations of their positions.

Some nights we even slept out there beneath the open sky, gazing upwards as we whispered stories of our friends to each other. They were written, recorded, but that was a different task for different times—in the darkness winking with lights, we alone remembered the people who made the miracle possible.

We visited Jahno, and stayed there almost a year, creating copies of all the books we’d written thus far. I say we wrote them—Zariya is the one who did most of the scribing, and she was the one most devoted to creating additional records. Both of them had gained too much from the fall of Koronis to believe a single archive would be enough to preserve all the stories of the world. With their heads bent together, they tirelessly copied our charts of stars, the tales we’d gathered from the far islands of the world, and tested themselves in languages other than the one we shared.

I remembered feeling jealous of Jahno, but that had been before. Before we’d seen the world end and begin again, Zariya and I had been Sun-Blessed and Shadow only—now, we were partners in word, heart and soul, more matched and melded than anyone else could hope to be. There had been a time when I’d wanted to be able to get her with child. Now, I was simply happy to watch her blossom and blaze in Jahno’s company.

It was still me she came to bed with every night, and I was there the first time her stomach rebelled against changes her body was going through; I was there the first time the babe within her kicked out against her walls and I was there when her waters broke, moments before her body thrust her into agony.

Jahno was there too, of course. But Zariya had never excluded either of us from the private journey she was undertaking: we were all family, in this way. The midwife stopped me at the door to our bedroom, and I raised my brows at her, making to push my way by. I’d witnessed Zariya in the worst pain of her life and been no more than a metre from her side the entire time—how could I miss this?

Jahno’s hand on my shoulder drew me back. With care, he said, “It’s a woman’s place.”

And despite my body, I was not a woman. We sat together in the sitting room and waited to be called in, clenching each other’s hands tightly when Zariya’s pained cries rang through the house. In this moment, Jahno and I were closer than we had ever been, joined together on the far side of childbirth, where waiting was all we could do. Eventually, we heard a different cry, and as one, Jahno and I rose to our feet, overcome. We embraced before the midwife appeared to wave us through.

Zariya’s eyes were closed the moment we entered; I saw the weight of exhaustion on all her body. But for us, she still had a smile, and propped herself upright to show the new little person latched onto her breast. To all of us, she simply said, “Welcome home, my loves.”

The next day, our girl was named Liris, after the mayfly who’d saved the world with his courage and devotion.

“How do we raise her?” I asked the question bluntly, unable to put it any more eloquently without making myself physically uncomfortable. I knew Zariya would understand what I meant; I prayed that Jahno would too.

Jahno nodded, tucking his hand beneath this chin, “We raise her to be what she would like to be. She can be a great warrior and a great scholar. A new life is full of possibilities. She can be anything she like.”

“I’d like her to be happy.” Zariya sighed, still exhausted from the ordeal of giving birth. I was grateful it would never be a burden placed on me, despite my body’s apparent ability and willingness to do it. Zariya had been right, and my monthly trial was less painful now, but no less intrusive.

Would I have chosen to be _bhazim_ , given another option? I suppose I had, in a sense—I’d taken the word and made it a part of me. I’d made it possible for me, Khai, to fight and defend and kill when necessary. With Zariya’s help, I’d made it possible for Khai to love and elate, too. None of these things required me to be a man or a woman, and I was happy that way. “I want her to be happy inside herself.”

“Then we’ll raise her with knowledge.” Jahno declared, nodding firmly. “We will give her space to ask all the questions there can possibly be. Between three of us, I’m sure we’ll know enough answers to please her.” Zariya had smiled her agreement and I felt comforted by the declaration, surrounded by a family who understood me.

Later that evening, with Liris breathing soft, deep sleep between us, I touched Zariya’s forehead and murmured softly. It was something I hadn’t wanted to say in front of Jahno. “We’ll have to watch her grow old, you know. One day, she’ll be older than we are.”

“I know.” Zariya smiled at me, her eyes full of tears. She laid a hand upon our baby’s chest and shook her head once, positively beaming despite the sadness etched on her cheeks. “But think of the stories she’ll tell.”


End file.
